Here's Why Investor Steve Jurvetson Saved Elon Musk's Space Dreams

In 2008, Elon Musk was dead set on colonizing Mars, and building electric sports cars and just about broke. Steve Jurvetson was the venture capitalist who saved him.

On Thursday night Jurvetson, a board member of both SpaceX and Tesla, talked about why he invested in Musk's companies when the entrepreneur was out of money and the rest of the world thought Musk was crazy.

The answer: Jurvetson wants to fly to the moon.

Jurvetson, who is a managing partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, spoke at the prestigious Silicon Valley Churchill Club, a local tech-industry event series. He accepted the club's Game Changer award on behalf of SpaceX.

He was boyishly gleeful as he talked about SpaceX. His admiration for Musk and the SpaceX mission oozed.

During an interview conducted by Internet pioneer Esther Dyson, Jurvetson dropped several tidbits.

Musk's original plan was to colonize Mars. He started building rockets because he thought it was crazy that rockets were not reusable. He had to solve the affordable-rocket problem before he could get to Mars.

He's still planning on going to Mars.

"SpaceX lowered the cost of going into space by 10x. The ministers of China say, 'We can't compete on price with that. In how many industries have you heard ministries of China say ever say that?" Jurvetson laughs.

Musk thought that it would take $50 million to get his first trip to Mars. He was $200 million in and had "spent all of his money between that and Tesla and he went into personal debt" by 2008. Things were looking dismal.

But Musk is the "most risk-immune person I've ever met," he says. "He's really an American hero, more than anyone I've ever met."

Musk "called me around the darkest times," he remembers. "I was a believer all along, and just wanted my partners to let me invest in something this cool. I really like rockets."

Jurvetson had invested in Musk's other company, Tesla Motors, which was proving electric cars could be green, stylish, and fast. Jurvetson is actually the owner of the first Tesla Model S, No. 1 off the production line.

So, will he take a rocket flight? Absolutely.

"But not the first or second," said Jurvetson. "I think that's crazy stuff." That line drew a big laugh from the audience.

Jurvetson's dreams are simpler than Musk's. He doesn't want to go all the way to Mars, just a simple orbit around it. He thinks other people will want to do the same because a SpaceX flight should be affordable.

"Putting seven people in orbit should not cost more than flying a commercial jet around earth," said Jurvetson, who argued it should actually cost less. "Go to the moon, that's my dream."

Given that SpaceX was the first commercial entity to ever successfully dock with a space station, it seems pretty likely that dream will soon come true.